The Bollywood Story – Photos by Andy Frizzell

Photos by Andy Frizzell, no reproduction without permission.

‘The Bollywood Story’ was a two part documentary, produced at Pebble Mill by Narendhra Morar, about the history of Indian cinema from 1913. It went out in 1989. The film editor was Mike Duxbury, assisted by Victoria Trow.

These photos are from a trip to India (Bombay, mostly). The documentary title was The Bollywood Story’. I think we spent four weeks in and around the Indian film industry in Bombay interviewing stars, prospective stars and key people from the industry. We spent a lot of time following Anil Kapoor who was a big star in India then. He will be better known to British film goers as Prem Kumar the ‘Chris Tarrant’ character in Slumdog Millionaire. The crew were Paul Sen, Director; Cameraman was John Kenway; Assistant/Second camera Keith Froggatt; Sound Alex Christison PA was Douglas ??? He was one of only two male PA’s in the Beeb at the time and there was a researcher, Harbinder Minhas. We had a fixer called Uday who made my life a lot easier with the hired in crews for the studio shoot. The studio we had was previously used for filming parts of ‘Ghandi’. There were some dubious bits of kit. The crane looked like it was made from giant Meccano and the overhead lighting ‘gantry’ was just scaffold boards and rope. Conversation on arrival: John Kenway: (to me)

“You’re not going up there!….”

Me: “Damned right I’m not!”

As if he needed to tell me! I had a crew of twenty in that studio which was pretty good considering I only had fifteen lights! The dodgy wiring and mechanical lighting effect were both seen on set at another studio and both involved exposed conductors. I’d like to point out they were nothing to do with me and I didn’t use them!